Why doesn't my web site http://www.kitchenartworks.com/ no longer come
up in a Google Search?

pderas-

I tried to view your source code, but it is locked down.(Not a bad
idea, in my humble opinion, but no one can see your keywords, or other
potential errors). But I do see that you changed/updated your site on
May 27, 2002. Was it after this date you noticed a change in rankings?
Perhaps your site was "optimized"?

Did you change any meta tags and/or keywords? Be sure to have your
metas and keywords include words that people will use in a search,
even misspelled versions can be used. Did you add or loose links to
your site? To other sites? Many factors can affect a rating, and it
would be impossible to know for sure which one (or more) caused the
change in ranking. Chances are good that it will reappear in time.
What words did you use to search for it? Did you submit it to Google?

There is a lot of excellent information to be found by navegating
around this Google site:
://www.google.com/webmasters/4.html

Be sure to click on  all the topics in the left column, especially the
"Do's and Don'ts" to find more good tips, like this one: "Be very
careful about allowing an individual consultant or company to
'optimize' your web site. Chances are they will engage in some of our
"Don'ts" and end up hurting your site. "


 Hope the above helps you out.

Regards,
crabcakes

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Request for Answer Clarification by pderas-ga on 24 Jul 2002 11:58 PDT

Thnks a lot for your response Crabcakes
What do you mean the source code is "locked down"?
My designer corrected an error in May. Otherwise there have been no
changes since it was posted in May of 2001. I HAVE had a couple of
times when the site was attacked by the Nimda virus 2/02 and 6/02 and
stats were affected.
The site enjoyed gradually increasing traffic and search engine
referrals until around Dec/Jan of this year, when it began to be
dropped by search engines and traffic dropped. I don't really have a
problem with that since I use it for a local adjunct to my Yellow
Pages ads and for referrals from national associations I belong to.
What worries me though is that when a potential client enters
www.kitchenartworks.com into the Google Search Box...nothing comes up
except:

"Sorry, no information is available for the URL
www.kitchenartworks.com

If the URL is valid, try visiting that web page by clicking on the
following link: www.kitchenartworks.com
Find web pages that contain the term "www.kitchenartworks.com""

on Yahoo & Lycos it's some linking organizations but no direct link to
the site:

NARI 
... CKD, CID 548 Teresa Dr. S. San Francisc, CA 94080-2151 CA: San
Francisco Bay Area
NARI, Office: 650-871-6006 Fax: 650-871-6006 Email:
pderas@kitchenartworks.com ...
http://www.nari.org/level2/homeowners/findaprofessional.cfm?chapter=CA4&action=results


hearts 
... Interior Design. http://www.kitchenartworks.com/
http://www.theinteriordesigner.com/
AboutDecorating.net: Home Interior Design, Decorating Tips, Home Decor
http ...
http://www.patchworkpalace.co.uk/pages/lifestylelinks.htm 

On Hotbot it's what I would expect to see:

WEB RESULTS   (Showing Results 1 - 1 of 1 Match )    
1.  Kitchen Artworks - kitchen, bath, interior, and cabinetry design 
 Site Map Home About Us Customer Testimonials Frequently Asked
Questions Contact Us Services Portfolio Hiring Us Tips Hiring a
professional contractor Remodeling — where do I start? Cabinetry —
standar
5/8/2001 http://www.kitchenartworks.com/sitemap.htm
See results from this site only.
 
I have already received calls from potential clients saysing they
can't find my site using search engines. This is a major concern to
me.
Peggy

---

Clarification of Answer by crabcakes-ga on 24 Jul 2002 23:00 PDT

pderas, 

I can understand your concern. It does seem very odd that your site
would practically disappear! I do not mean to sound trite here, but if
your customers KNOW your url, why would they enter it in a search
engine...why not enter it in the URL ? When folks already know the
address, they usually don't look it up in Google. What would be used
in Google, Dogpile, etc. would be for folks who don't know your
address. Wntering for example, custom kitchens + San Francisco  is
where you should want your site to appear. Of course, you DO want it
to appear, and it is not, you are absolutely correct.A search on
Google using kitchen design + california  returned nothing mentioning
your site, nor your actual site. Searching with custom kitchens +
California  gave nothing ,  custom kitchens + San Franciso, nothing, 
kitchen design + San Franciso, nothing. Using the
allinurl:kitchenartworks.com returned nothing as well.

A search of www.kitchenartworks.com on Dogpile shows your site as
Number One under Search Hippo, but searching with "kitchen design +
California" turns up nothing.

Sites that are linked to dead sites can have lesser rankings. The
below site, one you mentioned as having a link to yours is,
http://www.patchworkpalace.co.uk/pages/lifestylelinks.htm   This link
is no longer "live", the site has disappeared.

Your site is also NOT listed on this site, and this site has several
broken links and missing graphics.
http://www.theinteriordesigner.com/

Your site IS linked from this site still and shows up on Google, under
the Nari site.
http://www.nari.org/level2/homeowners/findaprofessional.cfm?chapter=CA4&action=results


What I meant about your code being "locked down" was your web designer
has made it impossible for people to see your code. If you right click
on most sites, then on Source(or in Internet Explorer, click on  View,
then Source ) you can see the HTML code the page was written in. If I
could see it, I would know what meta tags and/or keywords your
designer has used. It is possible the designer deleted or changed the
meta tags when the site was updated.

Do you know how many "hits" your site is getting?(Before yesterday, of
course...I have "hit" it a lot in researching this question). Your web
designer should be able to obtain these numbers easily from the server
that hosts your site. Sites that get few hits can fall in the ranks.

More tips sites:
http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/tips.html

http://www.netmechanic.com/promote.htm

Try reading this forum about Google indexing and ranking
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/1526.htm

Hope this helps. Have you discussed this with your web site designer?
Sometimes you just need to wait....MY sites did not show up for 3-4
months. Some of the sites MY site liked to showed up, but not mine.
Then all of a sudden they showed up.

Good luck.

Thanks for the great attention to my problem. You have given me many
avenues for action to resolve the issue.

Thanks for your clarification...I will check this again.

Thank you for your very thorough answer Crabcakes. I am still
mistified but at least I know that this is just the nature of the
Google/Yahoo beast.
My traffic has dropped to an average of 160 per week. I actually had a
day last week with 0 hits. Sigh.
Thanks to you my experience with Google Answers beta has been very
good for the first time at least.
Peggy

I just visited her web site and had no trouble viewing the source.
However, the only meta tag I could find was
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=iso-8859-1">
which is automatically generated by whatever software was used to
design the site. I did not see meta tags for a description or
keywords, which would help in search engine submission.

As a brief follow-up, I don't think the site ever had description and
keyword meta tags. From the Hotbot search result provided, the
accompanying text is part of the site's navigation, not a description.
You should get your web page designer to add in the appropriate meta
tags, then you can submit your site to dmoz.org and it will eventually
(after a few months) get listed in Google.

I did finally pull the site into a WYSIWYG web layout program and see
the source code. I could NOT see it by ordinary means as described
previously. I did not see any descriptive meta tags or keywords. I
concur with cogpscych that you should get your web designer to add
descriptive words. As I said before, even commonly misspelled words
are helpful to include. Example, "kichen" for "kitchen". (Also include
correctly spelled words!)
Best of luck!